Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…This is a huge idea. Basically saying like, Bitcoin is a calculator, let's build a computer. If we're going to build a computer, it's got to be a wholly different thing. He goes first to the Mastercoin team and tells them about this. He's like, hey, I'm working on your white paper, what if you guys did this instead? The Mastercoin team, half to their credit, they're like, wow, that is a big idea, that's really cool. Then half to their incredible detriment, they're like, we're going to stay focused on what we're doing. That was probably a mistake. Let me just crystallize this even further, just because I keep thinking that it is a stretched analogy. It's like someone handed you a Macintosh without Mac OS for it. What you said was, well, I'm going to start building Slack or I'm going to start building Chrome or Photoshop. Then somebody proposes to you, whoa, instead of just building Photoshop, build Mac OS. Imagine the potential that we will unlock with that. We only have so many resources. Yeah. There's this amazing email that's in The Infinite Machine that Camila cites from the founder of Mastercoin to Vitalik. He says, but I'd rather see Mastercoin doing its core functions before we start experimenting with scripting, scripting being what you would need, like a universal scripting language as part of this to turn it into a real computer. Vitalik, at first he's a little disappointed. Then he's like, wait a minute, I'm Vitalik Buterin. I've got a following. People in crypto land know me. I'm good at writing white papers. I'm also pretty technical. I think this is the future. I'm just going to go do this. He leaves Tel Aviv and heads to probably the one place in the world, certainly then, and probably still today were the best place where if you've got the big world changing idea, you want people to take you seriously, even if you're not super well-known. He goes to San Francisco. Of course, remember, he knew the Ripple team and Ripple's based in San Francisco. He shows up, he counts serves, he crashes on the couch in the apartment of Ripple's CTO, Stefan Thomas in SoMa. He spends two weeks in San Francisco and he alternates between. During the days, he goes on long walks around San Francisco up and down the hills, and then he comes back and he just writes the white paper. He doesn't talk to Stefan. Stefan wants things like, hey, I want your thoughts on Ripple and like, maybe you should write about Ripple and events like that. He's like, no, no, I'm focused. He writes the white paper in two weeks, which would become the Ethereum white paper. At first, he titled it, the ultimate smart contract and decentralized application platform. Then he realizes again, Vitalik knows how to write, he knows how to convince people. He's like, I need a cool name for this project. He starts scrolling through Wikipedia looking for science fiction terms that he can use as inspiration, Sci-Fi terms, and he comes across the word ether or aether. I always thought it was aether. Aether was then called ether. This concept, I remember this from way back in middle school. It originated with the ancient Greeks who thought that aether was the fifth element out there. There's wind, fire, water, earth, I think are the four elements. The ancient Greeks postulated that those were like the human elements, but there was this fifth element called aether that the gods, the medieval Greek gods breathed. This idea never got stamped out in human history. In medieval times, just when the scientific revolution was getting going, people postulated that aether was an invisible substance that permeated the universe, that light traveled the force. It's like the force, it's exactly like the force. Specifically, light was conducted through aether. The gods breathe it, whatever. Anyway, it has been disproved, not the case. Vitalik thinks this is perfect.…

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